Modern Music Box

This was an idea that I had after getting frustrated with moving my computer speakers, and mp3 player out to the garage and back every time I wanted to work on something. With all the wires and mess, it was just no fun. I had a hand full of spare computer parts, so I decided I’d build a little computer case that included a touch screen, a pc, and speakers all in one. The only thing that I need to bring with it is the power adapter, similar to a laptop.

It is about 10.25” tall, 12” wide (at the bottom) and 7.75” deep. It is all 1/2” red oak, all cut by hand with my brass back saw to length, and some pieces trimmed to width on the router table I made.

I have a video of it in operation, the audio isn’t the best and I promise it sounds better than it does in the video, but that is the nature of recording with a photo camera :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LceUVinUGk

Is that an old Lilliput? If so, was it in your car before this? I have a few of them laying around from former installations in vehicles, but I’m not sure I kept the AC power supply. I think I just threw away that same mobo as well, ha!

@interpim:I haven’t actually added up the total cost explicitly for this project, but I think it’s somewhere around $700 if I were to buy all the parts for it (wood and other hardware included) The electronics and such is probably around $650. I used some spare parts for this, so I think the out of pocket cost at the time of building was only around $400. If I were to do it again, I might either skip the touch screen part and just do a regular screen with remote, or try to find a cheaper one (something like what HokieScott is asking about). The one I used was around $225 shipped (a bit expensive, but was exactly what I needed)

The motherboard is a Mini-ITX form factor. It’s 6.7”x6.7” in size. It has an integrated processor, similar to those found in netbooks. It’s very low power (the whole thing pulls about 27-30W when in use) so the 2 50mm fans in it are able to cool everything just fine.

@HokieScott:It’s actually a Soundgraph brand FingerVU 700m (an OEM model). It’s powered from the motherboard’s power supply connection (it comes with an adapter) and plugs right into a motherboard USB header. As I mentioned above, it was $225 after shipping, so it wasn’t cheap. I looked at quite a few Lilliput screens, and almost went that route, until I found this one. If I do another one though, I’d probably look a lot harder at the lilliput screens, but the one I have was easy because it could get its power from inside the computer without a second adapter.

I could have, since I already have a Zune and some speakers, just built something to hold that, but that’s not as much fun! I also have a file server that I store all of my music, backed up movies, and recorded TV shows on, so I can also stream that to this thing as well as internet radio/music streaming, or tutorial videos. I’ve been using it to listen to music as well as view plans for the project I’m working on that I made in sketchup, and of course keeping up with LJ’s :D

I know that the $700 price is a little steep, but that’s sort of the problem with being a consumer and not an OEM distributor… I don’t get the low ball prices that large companies like dell, apple, hp, etc all get on the hardware… But I’m sure if a manufacturer such as those made one of these, it’d probably be around $500-$600, and if it was Apple probably $800-$900 ( sorry couldn’t stop myself :P ) Not THAT far off of my price, and I had more fun making it than they would :)